Miami is not the only city plagued with an ineffectual public housing system. Corruption, embezzlement, and general foot-dragging are commonplace in this murky web of developers and officials across the country.

SAN FRANCISCO
In the city by the bay, San Francisco’s Housing Authority is leaving hundreds of public housing units vacant because they’re damaged. Meanwhile, many of the units currently in use are decrepit and riddled with housing-, fire-, and health-code violations.

And consider Ronnie Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. In 1996, when he was chief operating officer for the Cleveland housing authority, he was appointed acting executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority after HUD took over the troubled agency. But Davis’s tenure as director would soon be overshadowed by a grand jury inquiry into questionable financial dealings during his tenure in Cleveland.

CLEVELAND
Why go to the bank when you can use taxpayer funds as your own private ATM? That was apparently the thinking among Cleveland housing officials, who redirected hundreds of thousands of dollars from projects for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority serving the Cleveland metropolitan area to personal bonuses and their own mortgage payments. In 2001, an Ohio federal grand jury indicted Ronnie Davis, then director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, and Claire Freeman, his former boss at the Cleveland housing authority. Amidst allegations that Davis’s time at SFHA was also not blemish free, Davis pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge in the Cleveland case, receiving only probation for cooperating with authorities against Freeman, who was eventually sentenced to 18 months in jail .

OAKLAND
In Oakland, California, the city attorney sued the city's housing authority for allegations that the public agency created unsafe housing conditions, where many residents live in dilapidated buildings filled with mold, in areas plagued by gangs and drug dealers.